Having to leave Nazi-besieged Poland didn't have to be pleasant for the Poniatowska family. It was the year 1942 and Elena was counting ten springs. It was probably not so traumatic for her. At that age, reality is still diffuse, amid the mists of fantasy and the triviality of childhood.
But the subsequent awareness could have even more effect than expected. More so in a person like Elena Poniatowska, revealed as a great writer, traveled and committed to various causes concerning Human Rights.
Her aristocratic origins by both branches, paternal and maternal, were never for her a foundation, although they were a tool for that constant struggle in defense of equality in any field.
The novel, as Poniatowska's antecedents could not be otherwise, is understood by Elena as an instrument towards criticism and approach, towards introspection in the human in many facets, from the natural arrival of love to the motives for hatred, from the will to know the need to forget.
The "Red Princess" never disappoints in everything she writes (serve as an example one of his last books) And it is that Elena has lavished on articles and essays, novels and stories. We always find in his writings the passion for living and the intention to sublimate all emotions and ideologies towards something positive, leading us by basic personal perceptions such as empathy or resilience.
Top 3 recommended novels of Elena Poniatowska
The skin of heaven
Sometimes we assume that being human is to ignore the most transcendent evidences to plunge into the day to day, crouched, looking for pebbles of happiness. On the contrary, looking for answers in the stars is to probe the infinite, in which we are nothing ...
But perhaps in that remoteness, in that immeasurable space we could find the most honorable outlet for the ego, thus being able to be more just with others of our species.
Summary: "Mom, is the world ending back there?" This phrase opens the way to a fascinating story: that of a man of enormous talent destined to unravel the mysteries of astronomy. Lorenzo de Tena, nonconformist and rebel, must fight against social inequalities, bureaucratic traps and political temptations to see his vocation fulfilled.
But the greatest challenges in his search will not come from science but from the most hidden face of people, the one that hides passions and feelings. A novel that, like a telescope, brings us closer to the most unattainable challenges: the stars and love.
The train goes first
As a metaphor, the train can be understood as a hackneyed resource. And hence the greatest glory of this novel. Making the most of the train as a vital moment is only at the height of feathers capable of reinventing, transmitting a great story and continuing to excite. Elena succeeds.
Summary: "I was hungry and cold, I felt that no fire, no embrace would warm me, but I know that if a single man fights and does not allow himself to die, life is worth it." This was a man who was born in a town in southern Mexico.
He would never have gotten out of it, but one day the train passed in front of his eyes and in the noise of that machine he heard the story of his life; he knew the reason for the indomitable desire to know that always pushed him beyond his limits.
And indeed, to Trinidad Pineda Chiñas, the central character of this novel, the train took him to everything: to places he never imagined, to countless knowledge, trades, people, possibilities, and especially the instant he spoke to his companions railroad workers with such ardor and conviction that it made them the vanguard of the workers' struggle. And they turned the country and the regime upside down.
The train is life. But if being a railroad man is a man's business, none of them is anything without women. Mothers, wives, teachers, lovers, rails, pass through these pages with a powerful presence, with the immeasurable force that beats within each one. They are what men fail to be, or even imagine.
Leonora
There are those who see in this story something of Elena herself, raised in high cradles but reactionary in the face of immobility capable of swallowing with unjust justice and accommodating morals. A great novel that, in turn, also polishes the role of women in history and in the world.
Summary: An indomitable woman, a rebellious spirit ... a legend. One of those novels that one simply cannot miss. She was destined to grow up as the wealthy heiress of a textile industry magnate, but from a young age she knew that she was different, that her ability to see what others did not see made her special.
She defied social conventions, her parents and teachers, and broke any religious or ideological ties to conquer her right to be a free woman, personally and artistically. Leonora Carrington is today a legend, the most important surrealist painter, and her fascinating life, the material from which our dreams are fed.
Leonora lived the most turbulent love story with the painter Max Ernst. With him he plunged into the whirlwind of surrealism, and rubbed shoulders in Paris with Salvador DalÃ, Marcel Duchamp, Joan Miró, André Breton or Pablo Picasso; by Max freaked out when he was sent to a concentration camp.
Leonora was confined to a mental hospital in Santander, from which she escaped to conquer New York at the hands of Peggy Guggenheim. He settled in Mexico and there has culminated one of the most unique and brilliant artistic and literary works.
It is not the first time that Elena Poniatowska portrays an exceptional woman like no one else. The incredible life of Leonora Carrington is, in her hands, an exciting adventure, a cry for freedom and an elegant approach to the historical avant-gardes of the first half of the XNUMXth century.
